Cross breeding maybe?

[Fishie]

I Think My platy have "mated" surprise surprise ! I got 2 sunset fire wags and 2 red wag platy. 1:1 of each species but my male sunset is swimming along with my female red wag and I think they "mated". I hope this is called cross breeding I forget the "name". My male red wag is swimming with my female sunset and both female look preggers so is this bad? :/

 

[Mumma.of.two]

A platy is a platy. Same species just different color. It's not different to breeding a yellow guppy with a red one.

 

[Fishie]

A platy is a platy. Same species just different color. It's not different to breeding a yellow guppy with a red one.

Thanks!!! So what would the "name " be? Since red way and sunset.

 

[jetajockey]

Are you saying you hope they hybridize? As mumma said they are just different color strains of the same species. As to what they should be called, I guess it'd depend on what they look like. The names that they have now (sunset, fire, wag, etc) are all made up so you can call them whatever you want. Chances are you'll have some that look like each parent and maybe some that look like both.

 

[Andy Sager]

Cross breeding

I Think My platy have "mated" surprise surprise ! I got 2 sunset fire wags and 2 red wag platy. 1:1 of each species but my male sunset is swimming along with my female red wag and I think they "mated". I hope this is called cross breeding I forget the "name". My male red wag is swimming with my female sunset and both female look preggers so is this bad? :/

Pretty much all the platys available today came from crossing one color variety to another. In theory, you should get 25% that look like the mother, 25% that look like the father and 50 % that look like a combination of the 2.

I experienced true cross breeding when I had a Nubian platy and a Red Swordtail successfully breed. The offspring only lived for about a month tho. (The female was definitely a virgin and purposely paired to the male.) I did have some that were 1/2 red and 1/2 black. I was dissapointed that the fry didn't make it because I couldn't get the parents to breed again.

 

[Fishie]

Thanks!! I didn't want them to hybridize though.

 

[Andy Sager]

The only way...

Thanks!! I didn't want them to hybridize though.

... to prevent livebearing fish (Guppy, Platy, Molly, Swordtail) from hybridizing is to only keep the same gender together. If you mix males and females together and with other livebearing fish of the same specie (ie other guppies, or platys,etc) there's nothing you can do to stop them.
If you are trying to keep your strains "true" only keep that one strain in the tank or only the same gender from all the varieties of the same specie. They can't breed outside their specie (sans my 1 experience mentioned above.)
Keep in mind that if you keep the offspring from this first pairing, they will carry the genes of the 2 colors so these would not be good candidates for selective breeding.

Hope this clears things up for you.